


Aphelion

by PatternsInTheIvy



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Moral Ambiguity, Non-Graphic Violence, Protective Jack Dalton (MacGyver 2016), Sort Of, Torture, grey morality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29015838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatternsInTheIvy/pseuds/PatternsInTheIvy
Summary: When Mac is captured and there are no leads on his location, Jack does what he has to do to get information in order to rescue him.
Relationships: Jack Dalton & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 32





	Aphelion

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!
> 
> Just an additional warning is that this fic is exactly what you’d expect from the summary + tags, and that while it isn’t super dark or anything, well… it got a bit darker than I'd planned (but with that premise, I don't know how I did not see that coming.)

“Jack, don’t—”

Ignoring Matty’s voice, Jack removes his comms earpiece and turns it off.

He closes his hands in tight fists, feels his nails biting into his palms, and he’s sure he will see small reddened crescent marks there once he looks. The room he is in is dark, illuminated only by the pair of flashlights in his hands. It’s enough to let him see grains of dust floating in the air and the way layers of paint are peeling off the walls. The smell of mold is strong, and as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, there is a creaking noise from the floorboards.

He chose this house for a reason. It’s abandoned and isolated. Also, it was close to the place where everything went to hell, and he hadn’t needed to walk much.

Almost five hours ago, Mac was taken—or, that is the most reasonable explanation for the fact that Jack was knocked out and woke up alone.

After regaining consciousness, Jack spent half an hour looking around the place, searching for Mac, hoping to find him alive and well, dreading to be greeted by the sight of a lifeless body. That was _always_ his fear. Any time he and Mac got separated, he couldn't help but fear finding him hurt or dead, and having Mac's safety out of his hands felt just plain wrong.

His search for Mac was fruitless. Instead, he only found the unconscious scumbag that currently sits on the other side of the room with his arms and legs tied to a pipe.

In their haste, the drug dealers who took Mac ended up forgetting one of their colleagues.

Back in LA, Matty, Riley, and a huge team of techs are doing everything they can to find leads on Mac’s location. So far, they’ve got nothing useful. Jack himself tried to do his part, interrogating the guy, but so far, he hasn’t been very talkative.

Jack intends to change that.

If he wants to get Mac back alive, there is one thing left to do—the thing that Matty spent the last seconds of their call trying to convince him not to do. Her protests had been only half-hearted, however, and he’s pretty sure that she is aware that the only thing that would stop him from going ahead is if a clue of Mac’s whereabouts comes up another way.

He checks the comms to make sure they are off before walking to the other side of the room. Everyone who heard his conversation with Matty—that includes Riley—knows what he is about to do, but there is no need for any of them to listen in, to know the details, and have precise knowledge of how he will go about this. Jack knows that most people are aware of what he’s capable of doing, but there is a sort of comfort in hiding what he is _willing_ to do.

Truth be told, this isn’t the first time he’s doing something like this. He’s done it before in the name of missions, in the name of his country, in the name of a greater good, back in the CIA. It’s been some time since the last one, but… but he will always do what he needs to make sure that Mac is safe, and if this is what must be done, then he will do it. Even if Mac himself would disapprove, even if along the years, he made Jack _want_ to not be like that, to not jump to those alternatives so quickly.

On one side, doing this— _torture_ , give it the proper name, coward—in the name of rescuing Mac feels like a dirty thing. The very association of Mac and what he is about to do seems unholy. Mac isn't perfect, Jack is well aware of that, but he is enough of a good person that some of it bled out to Jack—or that's how he prefers to see things—he is the one who would find another way out of this if the situation was reversed.

But you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and all that.

On the other side, if there is one reason why Jack would do this again, it is for Mac.

Mac, who would protest against what he is about to do, say that torture is not only reprehensible, but ineffective… but that’s the point: he isn’t there, and that’s why Jack has to do this.

He might hate the fact that he doesn’t shy away from torturing someone for that, but he doesn’t regret it, not even for a second. And he doesn’t hesitate. The act itself doesn't bother him, it is his almost flippant attitude in the face of it that does.

That doesn’t matter now, though.

Mac is gone for five hours already, there is no telling what is happening to him. The people who captured him are no doubt very happy to have a US operative in their hands, and Jack knows that whatever they ask, Mac won't talk—so they will try to get him talking.

It’s not very different from what he is about to do, but at the same time, it is completely different, because _it’s Mac_ . And he isn’t sure what to make of the fact that, somewhere along the way, his moral compass became completely tied to Mac. There isn’t a country, an institution, his own metaphorical soul, or _anythin_ g that Jack would put before him.

That’s all there is to this.

** ** ** **

There is something about beating someone in a controlled setting—if there is anything about this that can be called that, anyway—that highlights the violence of it all. Say, when Jack is in a fight and hits someone’s face with his fist, he doesn’t stay behind to see the results. Besides, in fights, he never pays much attention to the noise of cracking bones, or the dull sound of muscle hitting muscle. It’s all buried beneath a curtain of adrenaline and urgency.

Not this time.

Even though Jack _is_ frantic to get answers, there is a necessary control and meticulousness to this that is making him hyper-aware of everything: the way the guy is breathing in short gasps, trying not to move his ribs too much, the coppery smell of blood, a drooping eyelid.

“Man, I told you that I don’t know where they took your friend—”

“Yeah, my hearing is perfect, I just don’t believe you.”

“You’ve got to believe me, _I swear_ I don’t know. Look,” he pauses to spit blood, “I’m just a new guy in this, okay? That is not the sort of thing they—”

Whatever the guy was going to say turns into a half groan, half scream as Jack pulls his right arm back and aims his fist on the man’s stomach, careful not to hit near his ribs. The punch has him doubling over as much as his hands tied above his head will allow, he’s wheezing and coughing, trying to breathe.

“Just tell me where your friends are hiding. Anything, and this ends.”

“I _can’t_!” the words are quiet and breathless, but they might as well be shouted.

Jack snorts, shaking his head, starts pacing. Fuck.

“You don’t know what they will do to me, _to my family_ , if I say anything…”

“I do, actually,” Jack replies and turns around, leaving the room.

Despite being abandoned, there is still a lot of stuff in the house, things left by the left people who lived there, or by the people who were working on restoration—it doesn’t really matter—and Jack goes from room to room, searching for the thing he is going to need for this. He checks his phone twice in the meanwhile, but there are no messages from Matty.

This means that there’s no news about Mac.

In the old, decaying kitchen cabinet, he finds a bottle with a transparent liquid—there’s no label on it, but the oily and pungent smell of the liquid inside it is enough to tell him that this will do.

** ** ** **

"Okay, bud," Jack says as he finishes pouring the bottle of kerosene over the guy’s legs, "here's what's going to happen if you don't talk."

The man is slumped on the floor, breathing in short gasps, and he keeps trying to drag himself away from Jack, but one of his legs—the one that might or might not be broken—is making that impossible.

"If you still refuse to talk, I will set you on fire, simple as that. But I ain't gonna let you _burn to death_ , got it? I will let you burn just enough that an infection will set in the next few days—a bad one. And I will walk away and let you tied up here."

Jack almost expects Mac to start on an explanation about infections now… only, that wouldn't be the subject of his choice right now. No, he would be the person stopping Jack from doing precisely what he's doing.

But that's the point, right? Mac _isn't_ here, and _that_ matters more than what he would say if he were.

Maybe if Mac were here, he would have thought of another way of doing this, but _all that Jack knows_ is this.

"I saw a few guys dying of infection, you know? It's not pretty."

The truth is that he isn’t going to do this, whether or not the guy talks. Killing him would be useless cruelty, especially killing that way. All he needs to do is convince the guy that he will follow through with that threat.

“I don’t know where they took your partner!”

“Earlier you said that you couldn’t say, now you’re back to saying you don’t know. Which one is it?”

Jack himself can’t tell which possibility he thinks it’s the truth, it’s all confusing.

_Yes, perhaps because torture isn’t even a reliable way of extracting information, there are many studies about tha—_

The shrill noise of the phone ringing is what silences the voice that sounds a lot like Mac’s.

“We’ve found the place where they took him to,” Matty says, the words rushed and loud, “Riley is sending the location to your phone,” there is a pause, “I can’t put the local police on this—”

“Mac and I weren’t even supposed to be here, I know that. Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” he says and ends the call.

Jack leaves the house in a hurry, he only barely remembers to free the guy’s hands.

** ** ** **

Between robbing a car and driving to the place where Mac is being held, it takes almost an hour. In total, it’s been around eight hours since the last time Jack saw his partner, and now that he isn’t intent on finding out _where_ he is, thoughts of _how_ he is are all that occupy his mind. He hopes that he isn’t too late—can’t bear that idea.

Getting to the compound where Mac is being held is not super easy, but ten minutes inside it, at first acting stealthy, and an empty magazine later, Jack is opening the door of the room where he supposes his partner is in.

The sight that greets him is one that haunts his nightmares—the ones he has both sleeping or awake.

Mac’s wrists are tied, the rope around them connected to a sort of hook attached to the ceiling, from where he is hanging, or almost hanging—his legs shake as he scrambles trying to stand on the tips of his toes—he is shirtless, and his hair is wet.

In a second, a lot of things pass through Jack’s mind: ischemia due to suspension, nerve damage, waterboarding. But Mac is moving, alive, and it’s like Jack can finally breathe since all of this began.

Jack quickly walks in, and Mac looks up when he hears the sounds of his steps.

“Jack!" he says, a bit out of breath, "what took you so long?”

Approaching Mac, Jack blinks at the question. He knows it’s rhetorical, but his thoughts go to what he was doing before—the thing that even turned out to be useless.

What he’d been doing doesn’t matter.

“I had to do all the work, hoss, and you’re complaining?”

Jack examines the way Mac’s wrists are tied and decides that it will be best if he just cuts the rope tied to the ceiling, and then frees his hands. He gets a knife from one of the pockets of his tac vest and cuts the rope. As soon he does that, Mac’s body sags, and Jack has to move quickly and hold him before he falls down.

“Easy,” Jack says, putting an arm on Mac’s back, the contact serving to calm him, to make it clear that Mac is there, solid, _alive_ , “what did they do?” he helps Mac sit on the floor, and then does the same.

Mac is already looking at the mess of ropes around his wrists, no doubt trying to find a way to free his hands, “I am fine, Jack. You got here in time.”

“You don’t look fine to me. And let me do this,” he adds, starting to cut the ropes, “did they drown you?”

“What?! No.”

“Your hair is all wet.”

“Oh that. No, they just poured water on me because water is a good conductor of electricity—well, not the water itself, but the ions—”

“Yeah, I get it, Mac. Electrical torture. The fact that you just collapsed when I cut the ropes tells me you’re not fine.”

“I already told you that I am fine. The thing they used had way too much internal resistance,” Mac says, but he sags against Jack’s side, his forehead resting against Jack’s shoulder, his breath is hot through the layers of fabric in the way, “not enough current to—well, just enough to hurt a bit—you know how it is, people think it’s all about voltage, and it’s not.”

“Yeah, I bet you tried to give a crash course on physics to the guys torturing you, huh?”

Jack finishes cutting the ropes—beneath them, the skin of Mac’s wrists is red, there are a few scratches and rope burns—and watches his partner with the corner of his eye while he massages Mac’s wrists, taking care to avoid the small lacerations.

Despite the protests and the brave façade, he reckons that Mac isn’t as fine as he claims to be. Jack has been through this sort of treatment before, and he remembers all about the subsequent headache, the muscle fatigue, stiff joints… add to that the fact that there is no telling if he lost consciousness at some point and was left hanging by his wrists, and it doesn’t take a lot of time, hanging, to cause serious damage. They need to get to exfil quickly.

He helps Mac stand and supports half of his weight during the walk into the car. There are bodies on the way, and Jack doesn’t bat an eye at those. What he did earlier feels, somehow, worse than this bloodbath, but he doesn’t regret any of those things, not when he can feel Mac against him while they walk. Not when he hears a low hiss at one point when they almost stumble together, the movement jostling Mac’s body.

This is far from the worse condition he’s seen Mac in; there were plenty of “worses”, even back in the sandbox. There was Lake Como, and, of course, Cairo. He despises those situations, every fucking time something like this happens, Jack vows to never let it happen again. He can admit, if only to himself, that it is somewhat fearsome to think of all the things he would do—has done—to guarantee that he will bring Mac back to safety time and again.

Even worse, however, is the fact that Jack _doesn’t know_ what he would do if Mac were to die in a situation like this one. The only thing he is sure of is that he would stop at nothing to correct such an unfixable wrong, no physical or moral barriers would stand in his way. And he wouldn’t regret it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love to hear your thoughts if you want to leave a comment :)


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